Incidence of Metopic Suture on Autopsy in Northern Region

After the age of 25 years the skull sutures are considered to be a good tool to assess the age of a person. The metopic suture fuses either in intrauterine life or up to the age of 2 years or maximum up to the age of 7 years. But sometimes the metopic suture does not follow the normal course of fusion and incidentally it is found unfused even in extreme old age. A 3 year retrospective study was conducted by the Department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology from 01-01-2003 to 31-10-2005 on autopsy cases and the incidence of non fusion of metopic suture was found to be 0.1015% (i.e. 3 cases out of 2955 autopsies).